Don't go for this stuff normally but I was reminded of the Haruspices of ancient Rome who made their predictions from the appearance of the entrails of sacrificial animals. It's an analogy, I know, but there were enough of those around in 2009 to give us some clues about potential winners and losers in 2010. We saw good businesses with bad balance sheets (treatable), bad businesses with bad balance sheets (terminal) and the odd bad business with a good balance sheet (but not for long!). It was (and) ever (will be) thus. So if you know what you've got, you pretty much know what you're going to end up with. Easy this prediction lark and the entrails bit certainly adds a touch of colour.
In 2009 I was frequently asked the question what role is there for
interims to play in distressed businesses. What took everyone by surprise was the fact that the answer was probably "Well evidently, not as much as you might expect". This was not because there isn't a role for them to play - the simple fact was the market was just not making demands on their skills and experience that were consistent with the challenging conditions that almost every industrial sector had to confront. The issue was said to be to do with 'the market' or with financial structures, neither of which (presumably) were going to be influenced very much by what might in other times have been seen as both conventional and positive intervention.
So has the boat been missed? No, because having pre-packed, restructured and renegotiated, and having waited almost two years for the 'market' to pull itself together, there is a growing realisation (neither of those having provided all the answers) that intervention might be a good idea after all. A couple of weeks ago I was asked a different question - what role is there for
interims to play when the UK economy begins to expand again?
Now that sounds a lot more positive to me.